[Latest Guide] Ship faster because you know more, not because you are rushing. Get actionable insights from 7 million commits and 85,000+ software engineers, to increase your team's velocity. Brought to you in partnership with GitPrime.

Some Programmers have the dream of switching jobs. They want to start a new career or even, switch jobs to earn more income. What is the best way to do it? Is it viable? Is every programmer capable of switching jobs and getting a better offer?

Watch this video and find out!

Transcript From Video:

John: Hey, what’s up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com. I got a question about switching jobs as a fresh programmer here. This question comes from Mariusz. I think Mariusz. It’s M-A-R-I-U-S-Z. That’s a very interesting name. I think I’m going to go with Mariusz. Anyway, “I really appreciate your videos. They are both informative and entertaining. I am a 30-year-old self-taught programmer. After a year of doing online courses and my own mini projects I ended up at a software company and I’ve been working there for about 4 months as a JS developer. Since I also created a profile on LinkedIn sometimes I get job offers from different companies but since I still consider myself a beginner I don’t respond to any. However, at times an offer seems really lucrative and interesting but the company is clearly looking for more of a senior than a junior developer. Should I even bother applying? It doesn’t seem fair to accept a great job offer while I’m still mostly learning by doing at my current job. I also feel obliged to stay at the current company since they are keeping me even though I’m not contributing a hell of a lot while paying me good money for that. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that. Keep rocking YouTube.”

Okay, so this is a good one, I think. There’s sort of this moral loyalty obligation feeling I think a lot of people have. I’ve talked about this before but you’ve got to dispel any notion of loyalty to a company in the business world, especially today. It’s not like your grandfather’s day of being a company man. Even then I would probably be one of those people who was disagreeing with it. The idea is a company is not going to be loyal to you. The long and short of it is is that you don’t need to have unnecessary loyalty. You could be dropped just like that. It’s good that you’re in a good opportunity but you’ve got to be on the look out for other opportunities.

Now that doesn’t mean that you always got to be out hunting and always on the prowl. You don’t want to do that because that would be a waste of your time. You don’t want to be like, “Oh, well this company will pay me $1000 more a year” and you keep on switching jobs. That’s a silly way to go as well. When there are honestly good opportunities especially—what you want to look for is opportunities where you can leap frog, right? Where you can go from I’m making 50K a year to 80K a year. That’s awesome. If you can take that opportunity you do that and you jump up. That’s how you’re going to advance much faster because I guarantee you if you stay at your old company, I have no idea what you’re making, but let’s say you’re making 50K as a junior developer and you stay there it’s going to take you 10 years to get up to 80K, but you could get it tomorrow by jumping to another company at 80K. That’s one of the best ways to advance your career, a little secret from my How To Market Yourself As A Software Developer. I’m spilling the beans here, but I talk about that there.

Anyway, the idea really is that you want to look for these opportunities. Here’s the other thing is everyone thinks they have this impostor syndrome. I did a video on impostor syndrome here and they think they’re not good enough. Probably 50% of the emails I get from people is developers saying, “I’m not good enough” or some way of feeling they’re not good enough. No one is good enough. Everyone has—technology moves so fast it’s ridiculous, you have to learn on the fly. You have to be able to learn quickly. I have a course on that.

Anyway, the point is really that you’ve got to get rid of this false sense that you’re just going to be super qualified for any job. What’s going to be most important is that you can hit the ground running. What I mean by that is that you can start learning and adapting and making progress. If you go to an interview and you are able to pass that interview and you are able to get the job offer have confidence that everyone on their first day of the job has these doubts that they can do the job. Every single job I’ve ever been at no matter how high I’ve progressed in my career, no matter how much I’ve done I’ve always had that doubt in my stomach of “Can I really do this job? Am I fooling everyone? Can I keep up the charade? Can I keep fooling them?” Guess what, you know, you eventually fooled them.

What actually happens is is you eventually find out that you are a lot better than you think you are and you can adapt to the situation. Don’t sweat it. Go and apply for those jobs and go to the interviews. It will be good practice and good experience for you anyway. Take notes. Figure out what you do wrong and what you do right and get that experience because when you become a great interviewer that’s going to be huge anyway so you might as well get that experience. If you get one of these jobs and it’s a leap frog opportunity don’t feel guilty about it. Cool. It’s awesome. Go and do it and you’ll figure it out. If you don’t and you get fired then big deal, then you know where you stand and you know what you need to work on and you try and you get another job.

I guarantee you, if one company will hire you for an advance position another will. So you’ll find another one and you’ll do better and you try again. We all have to learn on the job. Don’t worry about it. Don’t sweat it. Just go for the opportunity. Try to quell that self doubt. We all have that self doubt but you’ve got to be brave, you’ve got to have courage and get over that fear and overcome it anyway.

Anyway, thanks for the question. I wish you the best of luck. If you have a question for me, email me at [email protected]. If you like these videos subscribe to the channel. Talk to you next time. Take care.

[Latest Guide] Ship faster because you know more, not because you are rushing. Get actionable insights from 7 million commits and 85,000+ software engineers, to increase your team's velocity. Brought to you in partnership with GitPrime.